The latest author interview is that of British Author Michelle Medhat .
1) What is it about writing and telling stories that drew you into becoming an author?
I’ve always been drawn to writing. Capturing something that floats in my mind and making it real and tangible. Writing I always say is the result of ‘sparking synaptic moments’. I first wrote something worth reading when I was four and a half, when I dreamt of my Grandfather, not realizing he’d passed away that very night. I got up the next morning and wrote my poem ‘Sleep’
When I sleep my beautiful sleep
I see and hear things in my dreams
Of faces I no longer see
And voices I no longer hear
In my sweet beautiful sleep
I woke saying, “Grandad says bye bye” and handed them the poem. My parents were gob smacked when they read it. They’d already received the call from the hospital that Grandad had died early hours that morning.
From that moment on I’ve never really stopped writing. I may have changed style and content, but the thrill of writing – that putting down on paper of words inside me – has not left me. It’s the burst of enjoyment, knowing something has been created, that ignites me to write more.
I love telling stories that are mind blowing. I enjoy taking readers on a journey of excitement, horror and wonder. My writing style has been described as ‘fire and ice’. It’s even been said that ‘I’m a writer with ADHD but everything still comes together’. I know as a reader myself, I adore characters, good or bad, but I only invest in a character’s path in a book, if they are relatable to me. You need to feel that whatever they’re going through, whether it’s on a far flung planet, in an ancient medieval world, or down the halls in Capitol Hill, that they are still accessible to you as a reader. That’s what touches the emotions and makes a story outstanding and memorable. Without that real emotive connection, stories wash over you, and you’re unaffected by them.
Good storytelling enables a sense of escapism. A wonderful feeling that you can fall into a book get lost there. Reading the words, your mind can visualize scenes, you can have your own private movie running in your mind, and the outside world can almost vanish completely. It’s knowing I’m generating those scenes in the minds of my readers, making them gasp, or even shudder, that keeps me up writing at night, and at any opportunity I can during the day.
2) What writers have influenced you as an author? (why and how)
As a child I loved the classics: Enid Blyton, Beatrix Potter, Hans Christian Andersen. Growing up, I moved more toward espionage, mystery thrillers and science fiction. Ian Fleming, Frederick Forsyth, Tom Clancy, John Le Carré, Robert Ludlum, Agatha Christie, Arthur Conan Doyle, Arthur C Clarke, Isaac Asimov, James Patterson and Alfred Hitchcock. More recently, JK Rowling, Neil Gaiman, Douglas Adams, Richard K Morgan, Dean Koontz, Stephen King, Dan Browne and Sam Bourne.
Perhaps, the one common denominator in all of these writers that I love and have been heavily influenced is their ability to enthrall. That fundamental ability in good storytelling to hold the reader captivated, not knowing quite what to expect, and reading forward that bit more than they had intended to. That style of ‘unexpected, mysterious, unputdownable’ is what I’ve attempted to capture in my own writing, albeit with my own quirky signature style included in the mix.
